Doug Michels «Blue Star Human Dolphin Space Colony» 1987.

Project BLUESTAR is a Space Station designed to be built in the Twenty-First Century. Bluestar will be the first think tank in space, a research lab dedicated to the study of mind's newly expanded horizons, to the investigation of thought liberated from earth's gravitational ties.

BLUESTAR aims to nurture the growth of new non-earth-bound ideas by inventing an atmosphere in which the dimensions of weightless thinking can be expanded, observed, and understood. BLUESTAR will harbor the broadest possible range of inquiry, from the artistic to the psychological to the cybernetic, not merely the narrow experimentation of space engineering typical of its predecessors.

«In space, liquids propagate into spheres. BLUESTAR would support - within a shell of space-made glass - a 250 foot diameter water sphere, ultrasonically stabilized. This 'iconsphere' will, among other things, support a crew of dolphins.» ~ Doug Michaels.

While Zivadinov conceived of the aircraft as a theatrical set, and Woods employed a space station as an ancillary element in the fulfillment of the antigravitropic potential of his sculpture, the media artist, architect, and designer Doug Michaels proposed in 1987 the design of a rather unique space station cum artwork cum 'alternative architecture.' In 1986 he established the Doug Michels Studio to pursue innovative projects in architecture and design.

Michaels, who passed away in 2003, developed with his colleagues in 1987 a concept for a spacecraft to host artists and scientists interested in human-dolphins interaction and communication. The project resonated with the pioneering work of John Lilly, a scientist who defended the idea that dolphins have consciousness and intelligence at a time when this fact was not yet scientifically established.